originally they are facing backwards yes.
i took out the original ones because of the steering rack, now made new ones with unibals and parts of the old ones, still have to get them on but i am working on a customers car now.
Like your idea of the tension rods, might try that if my plan fails

Nice work! What exactly did you do with the steering column? Did you just combine parts with a s13 column? Ive been contemplating this type of modification on my Starion as it has a steering gearbox too.

Nice work! What exactly did you do with the steering column? Did you just combine parts with a s13 column? Ive been contemplating this type of modification on my Starion as it has a steering gearbox too.

Yes, in general I combined the 2 steering column's together. Between the 2 joints I used a spline-shaft of a Nissan Almera N16.

I walked around on a Nissan junk-yard and took a closer look to the steering-joints / shafts of the different models. The outcome was that a lot of parts can be combined with each other. For example the shaft with splines is for almost all nissan models the same.